Mullin Automotive Park at Enstone Airfield designs submitted

Foster + Partners has submitted designs for the Mullin Automotive Park at Enstone Airfield to the West Oxfordshire District Council for planning permission.

The car museum will be “world-class” in the British countryside, and will transform a disused airfield.

Gerard Evenden, Head of Studio, Foster + Partners said, “We are delighted to be part of this exciting new development that represents the convergence of mobility and lifestyle to create a new vision for the future. The Mullin Automotive Park will be a unique cultural destination set in Cotswold countryside, that seeks to support the wider community as well as providing a special experience for classic automobile collectors.”

The museum will be an open-ended collection, looking at the history of automobiles and charting the future of mobility. It will showcase the cars that have had an impact on our lives.

The project is the brainchild of Peter Mullin, a classic car collector from California, who built the Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard, CA.

Mullin said: “By any conventional measure this will not just be another car museum. We have had the automobile for just over a century, but my great grandchildren will probably never drive a motor car – at least not as we know it. Instead they will travel in secure autonomous pods controlled by a computer. The Mullin Automotive Park will tell the powerful story of the automobile and its role in shaping our societies, while also offering a view into the myriad possibilities that the future holds.”

The design, by architects Foster + Partners, takes inspiration from rural estates. There is a cluster of workshop type buildings with visitor facilities – including a ticket office and café. Most of the site will remain green parkland.

The museum was first proposed in February 2018. At the time, the project faced local opposition from residents and the Campaign to Protect Rural England who believed it to be elitist and catering to billionaires. West Oxfordshire District Council is considering the plan will rule on whether it can be taken forward.